In a ruling released Thursday, the commission said the town had cause to fire Kenneth Morehouse in January 2012 after he was caught violating a state law that bars police and firefighters from smoking on or off the job. The ban has been in place since 1988.

Morehouse, who had been with the department since 2003, argued he was exempt from the ban because he began working as a firefighter in Boxborough in 1986, before the law went into effect.

The Patriot Ledger reports that Commissioner Cynthia Ittleman said in the decision that the ban did apply to Morehouse because he was appointed to the Weymouth job after the ban took effect.